I can't help falling in love with you

“Yeah! Take that, bitch!” Dani cheered, dropping her controller and punching the air in triumph. She turned on Nick to gloat. “I got you, sucker!”

Nick rolled his eyes. “This game is ridiculous.”

“You’re just saying that because you lost.”

“No, I’m saying it because it’s a bullshit game. ‘Super Smash Sisters’? Are you kidding me?” Nick shook his head. “Couldn’t we just play the real game?”

“Sylvia didn’t have it,” Dani shrugged. “Besides, the real version doesn’t have a bunch of scantily clad women.”

“Are you kidding? It totally does,” Nick replied. “Have you seen some of the characters they added to the cast?”

“Okay, fine, but they don’t fight by smashing their boobs against each other while covered in body oil.”

“…That is accurate, yes.”

“See? So stop whining.”

They started up again and began to play. Dani was grinning and laughing, and to Nick it honest felt like old times.

“…You really are good at this,” he sighed, setting down his controller after getting his ass whooped for the sixth game in a row. “You’re even better than you used to be.”

“Back then I was focused on running track, and I spent a lot of time drawing, too,” Dani pointed out. “But I’ve had a ton of free time on my hands, nothing to do but work out and play video games. You’re just never going to get on my level,” she boasted.

Nick frowned. “…So you haven’t been keeping up with your drawing, then? I thought-”

“Yeah, well, it’s none of your business,” she snapped. Nick was stunned. He wasn’t expecting an outburst like that.

“I-I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I just…”

“Shut up! Just shut up!” She exclaimed, leaping off the couch. “You have no idea, Nick, none at all! You weren’t a part of my life then! So you don’t…!”

The accusatory finger she was pointing at him started trembling as her voice cut out. It fell to her side and she hung her head, and began to tear up.

“Dani…” Nick wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t know if he could. After what they’d been through already, and her massive outburst just now, she might have lashed out violently against him if he tried.

Then he remembered.

“It’s okay,” he said, stepping forward and wrapping his arms around her in a comforting hug. She started to cry into his shirt, but she didn’t fight him back.

After all, thanks to Dani’s transformation, there was nothing wrong with some skinship between friends.

“It’s not okay…” Dani muttered. Nick may not have been the most perceptive guy in the world, but he could tell that this wasn’t just about her career as an artist.

“Then tell me what’s wrong.” He led her back to the couch and placed his hand on her back, giving her a gentle rub.

“I’ve been holding this in for so long…” She sobbed. Then it all came pouring out. “This… this awful game… it’s so wrong! They’re trying to get me to fall in love with you! Do you get how sick that is? I’m a lesbian! They took my muscles away, you don’t think they’ll take that away from me, too? But I toughed it out! I’ve been fighting like hell, because I don’t… I don’t…”

Her voice cracked and she bent over, clutching her knees to her face.

“I don’t want to lose everything again because I gave up again…”

“Dani…”

“You think I don’t know?” She looked up into his eyes, wiping away her tears.

“Know what?” Nick asked, not sure what she meant.

“They did something to me. In that last transformation. I’m not the smartest woman in the world, but I’m not stupid!” She shouted, banging her fists against the cushions. “There’s something wrong with my brain now! Because all last week I was plagued with nightmares that were making me physically ill! But then the transformation happens, and,” she snapped her fingers, “…poof. All of a sudden, I’m fine with those dreams. I think I’m fine with those dreams, I know I’m fine with those dreams. Those dreams are no fucking problem at all!”

She glared furiously at him.

“They DID something to me. That bitch Sylvia. She made it all okay, didn’t she?”

The guilty look on his face said it all. Nick hung his head and nodded, his face flushed with shame. “Your transformation to make you okay with skinship and seeing you naked, it warped with your brain, making you think that was normal.”

“That’s how it starts,” Dani said bitterly, shaking her head. “First she makes me okay with you touching me sexually. And before long, I’m going to be okay with you having sex with me. And then… and then I…”

Her hands started to shake. She ran to the bathroom and bent over the toilet. She started to hurl and Nick ran after her.

When she finally looked up, she wasn’t angry anymore. She looked broken.

“They’re going to make me fall in love with you…” She whispered. “You have to realize that.”

“I know,” Nick said solemnly, shaking his head.

“And you’re going to go along with it.” It wasn’t even an accusation, just a bitter statement of fact. “Because of that shitty deal you made with her. That you wouldn’t say no. You gave up your freedom, my freedom, and what did I get? Those dreams, trying to… I don’t know, force some fucking porn into my head every night!”

Nick felt like he was going to throw up next. He couldn’t argue. She was absolutely right.

“And you know what the sick thing is?” Dani spat, wiping her lips with the golden towel. “I think I really did fall in love.”

“Wait, what?!” Nick backed off, shocked by that admission.

She scowled. “Not with you, jackass.” She flung the vomit-covered towel at him. “I think… I think I’m falling in love with Carly.”

“…Oh.” Nick stared at her, not sure what to say.

“And I know you’re sleeping with her, and that you have feelings for her, and she has feelings for you,” Dani sighed, shaking her head. “But that doesn’t matter to me. Even if she never reciprocates my feelings, I still… I’m such a fool. Heck, the other day, I bought sexy lingerie on the off chance she might be interested in seeing me in it, but it was pointless. It’s sitting untouched in my dresser, because I don’t have the stones to actually try and seduce anybody. Story of my fucking life, shy Dani too afraid to ask out the girl of her dreams. Well, even if I did, it wouldn’t fucking matter anyway.”

“Dani, if you have feelings for her, then you should tell her,” Nick said firmly.

She shook her head again. “No, you don’t-”

“Listen.” Nick took her hand and looked into her eyes. “Years ago, I was certain I was falling in love with Carly. Carly… she was how I got over falling in love with you. She’s funny, and beautiful, and she never treated me like a creep or a loser. When I was still recovering from heartbreak, she was like a tornado blowing my doubts and self-loathing away by dragging me off to do whatever she had on her mind. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have been able to move on, to Holly, or Mary.”

“Yeah…” Dani wiped her eyes. “Look how well that worked out.”

Nick pinched his lips together in exasperation. “That… isn’t my point. The point I’m trying to make is that I was too cautious with Carly.”

Dani stared at him. “Too… cautious?”

He nodded. “After what happened with you… the way you cut me off and ghosted me because you realized my feelings for you… I didn’t want that to happen again. I didn’t want to confess to Carly until I was certain she liked me, I didn’t want… I didn’t want so many things. I was afraid that if I gave her a sign that I liked her, she might completely ghost me, so I never let it on.”

“What are you trying to say, huh?!” Dani demanded. Anger began to leach into her eyes again.

“…I’m saying it didn’t matter. Because she left anyway. I didn’t see her again until she was brought here, and I always blamed myself. I mean, I could tell that she liked me. She wasn’t subtle about it. But I convinced myself not to risk what we had, so I wouldn’t lose her like I did with you, and because of that I lost my opportunity to confess.”

“Is that how you’re trying to make me feel better?” Dani scowled, biting her lip. “By blaming me for what happened with-”

“I’m not blaming you, it was my fault.” Nick cut her off before she could go down that road of thinking. “But my point is… if you like Carly, you need to tell her. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Because you’re right, we don’t know what Sylvia is going to do. For all we know, she could make you fall in love with me in the next transformation. And if that happens… won’t you regret not telling Carly how you feel? Not knowing if you could have even had a chance?”

Dani looked wounded.

“…She does know.”

“Huh?”

“She knows how I feel,” Dani whispered. “She told me… she asked me…”

Her hands shook and she nearly broke down crying again, but she stayed strong.

“Carly wanted to come up to the Master’s Suite with me tonight,” Dani said. “She was using herself as bait. She tried to seduce me with a threesome.”

“A threesome?” Nick couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Wait, Carly actually suggested-”

“She’s going through something difficult,” Dani sobbed. “She was desperate. How do you think I figured it all out in the first place?! Because there’s no way that I would have agreed to a threesome with you under any circumstances, but when she brought it up, I actually thought, for just a second, that it wasn’t a big deal! Can you believe that?”

She shook her head, and actually laughed. “It’s insane. I’m insane. But Carly…”

“…I see. That must have been painful for you,” Nick said, patting her on the shoulder.

“You’re fucking right it was,” she spat. “She knew how I felt about her, and she didn’t say anything. And then she tried to seduce me in order to…”

“In order to what?” Nick pressed her. “Because that doesn’t sound like the Carly I know. She’ll tease people, sure, but playing with someone’s feelings, that’s just not her.”

“Yeah, well, it’s what she fucking did. And it pisses me off!” Dani exclaimed. “I hate her! I want to pound her face in!”

She hopped to her feet and stormed out of the bathroom, pacing back and forth. Nick warily followed her back into the living room, not sure if there was anything he could do to make this right.

He didn’t need to say a word because Dani broke down crying on the bed a second later.

“I don’t wanna be mad at her!” She wailed. “She was scared, and she was hurting, and I… I just couldn’t deal with it! She was so desperate that she would do something that awful, and I just… I was so hurt I ran out on her.”

“Dani…” Nick sat down next to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her close. “You were hurt. If she tried to seduce you like that, it doesn’t matter if it was because she was desperate. She had no right to use step on your feelings like that.”

“…But I stepped on her feelings first,” Dani glumly replied, wiping snot from her nose. “Carly, she… she didn’t want to spend the night with Mimi. She wanted to spend it with us. But I told her that she couldn’t keep running away just because she didn’t like her, that Mimi deserved to hear that from her directly and that they needed to straighten things out. She must have felt backed into a corner, and that’s when she…”

“I see. So this is all about Mimi.” Nick hadn’t been able to get a straight answer out of Carly this entire time about why Mimi bothered her so much. It was clearly not just because the slime girl looked identical to her.

“I know it wasn’t right for her to do what she did, but I don’t care!” Dani wailed. “The thought of her being scared and in pain, it’s like… it’s too much! And I tried, I tried to take my mind off of it, but I couldn’t!”

She started crying again. Nick bit his lip anxiously, thinking about Carly imagining how much she must have been hurting right now, if Dani was like this.

“So what do you want to do?” He asked, turning towards her. He took her hand and squeezed it tightly, looking her in the eye.

“…I don’t know…” Dani admitted.

“Well you should think about it then. You’ve gotten so close to her these past few weeks, and your feelings… look, maybe it’s too early to say you’re falling in love, but with how hurt you clearly are, it’s obvious that she means something to you. And you need to decide now, whether or not she did something that you can forgive.”

Nick turned to the cage in the corner of his room, where Holly had been sitting patiently with an anxious expression on her face. She hadn’t wanted to interrupt the two of them, but this entire time she’d been worried sick about what was happening.

“Holly and I… we had our differences. And she hurt me. Badly. Maybe as bad as Carly hurt you tonight, maybe even worse. But she was suffering from that choice too, all this time. Isn’t that right?”

“…Yeah…” Holly nodded glumly. “Listen, Dani. When I was still hiding who I was, I said a lot of hurtful things and I caused a lot of pain to the people I cared about. And I told myself that I had to say and do those things, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to bear it if my secret came out. But… my secret came out. And it was okay. And I realized how terrible I was, and apologized to the people I hurt.”

She smiled. A genuinely compassionate Holly smile, not the manic grin of a horny sex addict.

“And it got better. This can, too. Carly’s probably hurting as well, due to whatever it is she’s hiding. Maybe she’ll be ready to come clean like I did, and the only thing you can do is decide whether or not you’ll be there for her when that happens. Okay?”

Dani sniffled and nodded. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Okay.”

“So what now then?” Nick asked. “I mean, if I were you, I would give Carly a bit of space, but this is up to you.”

“I want to see her,” Dani said, wiping her eyes and standing up. She looked longingly at the door. “But unfortunately, that’s not how it works.”

“Yeah,” Nick nodded glumly. “Sylvia won’t let us leave until morning.”

Dani sighed and hung her head. “I guess… we’ll have to wait until then. I just hope Carly will be alright with Mimi…

Nick hoped so too. But there was only so much they could do. Hopefully, tomorrow morning would look better.

---

Meanwhile, Dawn felt miserable.

“My head…” She groaned, turning over in bed. She’d stayed in her room the entire day, fighting the aftereffects of her first night out drinking.

“Here,” Rose said, setting a glass of water on the bedside table. “Make sure to drink lots of fluids, they help with a hangover.”

“Blegh…” Dawn fumbled for the glass, staring blearily at Rose. She hadn’t even bothered to put her glasses on. “Remind me which one of us is supposed to be the doctor?”

“That’s you, and you’re also the one who said, and I quote, ‘screw health, I need a freaking drink’ or am I wrong?”

Dawn gave the blonde a sour look. “…Worst part about being a genius,” she muttered, “is putting up with shit like that.”

She drained the glass dry. It didn’t help, like the forty glasses before. She still felt like shit.

“Well maybe next time, you’ll think twice before you go out drinking,” Rose replied, getting into bed beside her. Dawn groaned in response.

“What do you want me to do then, huh?” She grumbled. “I needed to… what’s the saying again? ‘Get some liquid courage’?”

“And it went so well,” Rose clicked her tongue and shook her head. “Listen Dawn, I know you’re feeling anxious about tomorrow-”

“Of course I am!” Dawn cried. “You heard Holly yesterday! If I want to make things right with her, then I have to sleep with Nick! That means having sex! Do you know how awkward it’s going to be, having sex with a guy who I’ve been rejecting since I was wearing a training bra?!”

“…You’re still wearing a training bra.”

“That is NOT the point and you know it!” Dawn hissed.

Rose sighed. “Look, Dawn, I think you’re taking this too seriously. Holly didn’t mean what she said when she asked you to have sex with him, okay?”

Dawn scowled. “Oh, yeah? Because she SOUNDED pretty serious.”

“Yeah, I know she did. But think. This is Holly we’re talking about here,” Rose urged her. “I know you two weren’t that close, but I got to know her pretty well. Now, is she a pervert? You’re goddamn right she is. Does she want the two of you to have sex? Absolutely, and me too, for that matter. But she won’t force you to. She would never demand that you have sex when you’re not ready for it, she’s just not that kind of girl. She’s teasing.”

“…I see.” Now that Dawn was in a more rational state of mind, she could understand the logic in Rose’s words. “That’s a relief.”

“Oh, really?” Rose raised her eyebrow. “Because you don’t look relieved.”

Dawn’s tail twitched and her ears flattened on her head. She sighed.

“Well…”

“You want to do it, don’t you?” Rose grinned. “You want to have sex with him!”

“No! No I don’t!” Dawn exclaimed. Her face turned as red as a tomato. “I’m not ready! We’ve barely talked, I’ve barely gotten to know him again, it’s all too sudden!”

“But you like him, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t even be considering it.”

Dawn’s blush deepened. “It’s not that simple,” she mumbled. “Nick and I… we have a history. And that’s not just something you get past.”

To Rose’s eyes, Dawn looked like a scared, shivering kitten. And a cat in heat. Somehow both at once.

“Look Dawn, Nick doesn’t have your memory. I’m sure you remember a lot about him-”

“I remember everything about him,” Dawn corrected. “I could tell you how many buttons were on the shirt he wore the day he first confessed to me in the sixth grade. And that’s just details. I still remember the uncomfortable look on his face when I accused him of stalking me, I still remember the wild look in his eyes when I caught him watching me on the way to class, not expecting I would even notice.” She tapped her forehead. “It’s all still stored right up here. Once I know something, I don’t forget it.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re so freaked out about this?” Rose suggested with a shrug. “You’re getting so caught up in all the awkward times stuck in your head that you’re reluctant to really give the two of you a second chance.”

She stared at Dawn and let the other woman’s tail do the talking for her. It swished back and forth and drooped down, showing how uncomfortable she found this conversation.

“…He’s still the nice guy I remember, that’s the thing,” she murmured. “It’s not just the bad stuff. I remember the sweet stuff, too. It’s why I could never really get upset at him for everything that happened between us. Because throughout all of it he was still that sweet guy.”

She sighed.

“If only everything hadn’t been so complicated when we were growing up, if we’d had that time… I don’t know, maybe it would have been different.”

Rose considered that. “Well, what if you still had that time right now?”

“Huh?” Dawn looked at the blonde like she was crazy. “What are you talking about?”

“Well if the only thing you need to determine your feelings for Nick is more time, what if we could get some?” Rose suggested. “You know, just spend the whole day with him tomorrow, cling to him like you’re his shadow. Dakota got the whole day with him yesterday, so I’d say you’re just as entitled, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s not that…” Dawn was about to reject Rose’s suggestion, and then she gasped. “Wait, that’s perfect! I know just what to do!”

Her good mood lasted for about a second and then her face fell. “…Wait, never mind. It won’t work.”

“Hmm? What won’t work?” Rose asked curiously.

Dawn shook her head. “I was thinking about purchasing something from the shop.”

She recited it perfectly from memory.

“One day with the Master (On the Purchaser’s next scheduled night with the Master, if applicable, for a 24 hour period starting from 6:00 AM of that day, the Purchaser and the Master will be isolated from the other Contestants on an intimate date, the details of which will be determined at the time of purchase.)”

“Oh! That’s perfect!” Rose gasped. “Yeah, you can do that!”

Dawn shook her head again and held up her hand. “One problem. It costs 5000 BP. And I only have…”

Rose winced. “Oh, right. You’re at what? 3400 BP or something?”

“Yup,” Dawn nodded solemnly. “So I can’t but it.”

Rose paused, studying the distraught expression on her buddy’s face. “…Ah, whatever. I’ll give you the money!”

Dawn’s ears flared and her eyes widened in surprise. “Wait, what!?”

“Sure thing,” Rose shrugged. “You need 1600 BP, right? Well, thanks to a certain blue-haired gal, I happen to have more than enough. So what do you say? Let me loan you 1600, and then you’ll be all set for your date tomorrow.”

Dawn stared at her in awe. “You’d do that for me?” She asked, shaking her head incredulously. “For real?”

“I just want my baby to have nice things,” Rose said mockingly. “Plus, I know what it’s like to be scrounging and scrimping and saving out of desperation. It’s why I took this goddamn gig in the first place. And now, well… look, if you want the money, it’s yours. We’re pals, right?”

She reached over and scruffled Dawn’s hair. The shorter woman wasn’t amused.

“Don’t do that, please,” she scowled.

“…Right. Sorry.”

“For real though? You’ll really let me just have that 1600 BP?”

“For such a smart girl, you seem to be having trouble with the word ‘loan’,” Rose teased. “I seem to remember you holding Gina over a barrel once upon a time.”

“…Rgghk.” Dawn’s ears drooped and she hung her head. “Okay, deal.”

Rose took out her tablet and typed a few things. “Done and done.”

Rose: 2000 BP – 1600 BP = 400 BP

Dawn: 3400 BP + 1600 BP = 5000 BP

Now it was Dawn’s turn to make a purchase. She took a deep breath to clear her thoughts, rubbed her eyes and slipped on her glasses, and took out her tablet.

Dawn: 5000 BP – 5000 BP = 0 BP

And with that, Nick’s next 24 hours were spoken for.